Very frequently asked. Among first few questions in almost all interviews. Among Top 5 frequently asked questions. Frequently asked in Indian service companies (HCL,TCS,Infosys,Capgemini etc based on multiple feedback )

Ans. "equals" is the method of object class which is supposed to be overridden to check object equality, whereas "==" operator evaluate to see if the object handlers on the left and right are pointing to the same object in memory.

x.equals(y) means the references x and y are holding objects that are equal. x==y means that the references x and y have same object.

Ans. Underlying data structure for ArrayList is Array whereas LinkedList is the linked list and hence have following differences -

1. ArrayList needs continuous memory locations and hence need to be moved to a bigger space if new elements are to be added to a filled array which is not required for LinkedList.

2. Removal and Insertion at specific place in ArrayList requires moving all elements and hence leads to O(n) insertions and removal whereas its constant O(1) for LinkedList.

3. Random access using index in ArrayList is faster than LinkedList which requires traversing the complete list through references.

4. Though Linear Search takes Similar Time for both, Binary Search using LinkedList requires creating new Model called Binary Search Tree which is slower but offers constant time insertion and deletion.

5. For a set of integers you want to sort using quicksort, it's probably faster to use an array; for a set of large structures you want to sort using selection sort, a linked list will be faster.

Ans. Comparable interface is used for single sequence sorting i.e.sorting the objects based on single data member where as comparator interface is used to sort the object based on multiple data members.

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